Is Our God Too Great For Us?

David the Psalmist and poet looked up into the night sky and was amazed. Even with his unaided eye, he marveled at the heavenly bodies of sun, moon, and stars. Then he marveled even more that God, who made all that, could care for people, small seemingly significant in the scale of the universe. Yet he realized that God cared for him, and he worshiped him.

Today we are awed even more when we learn of the magnificence of the universe, and the sub- microscopic elements of nature as well. Scientists say that there may be 400 billion stars in just the galaxy our earth is a part of. Furthermore, it has been estimated there maybe 107 billion galaxies, or groups of stars. When they consider how long it takes for light to travel to earth from some of these stars they suggest the universe may be 13.8 billion years old. As I hear this from scientists, whether they make only estimates or what, I sometimes have to wonder how God could care about little me, an ant, if that much, in his total scope of creation. One children's video we used to have of Jonah's experience, explaining to his shipmates that his God was the creator of all things; they said, “You mean one God created all this?” The microscopic world, we know, is also just as unfathomable.

I have a feeling God does nor want us to get hung up with all his wonders so that we have a hard time to really believe in him, that he has a personal care for us. Perhaps he want us to only know some part of who he is. I suppose that is why he sent Jesus, his representative, to earth for us to learn what he really wants us to know. Jesus called God “Father”. That is a part God really wants us to know. In nature we see that he is also much more, and so we also worship him, besides just asking favors of this Creator-Parent.

About 3 years ago, I met a newborn child, less than a day old, my first great-grandson. He was nestling there in the lap of his grandfather, eyes quite wide open, when we first saw him. He seemed to feel that there were people around him. But as we passed him around, he closed his eyes and went into a deep sleep, it seemed. He was loved, content, totally unconcerned that he was the center of attention. Nothing could disturb his rest in those loving arms that cradled him. This little fellow has much to learn about these people around him. He knows almost nothing about them. But he doesn't care about that now. He is just totally content, feeling totally loved.

Can we be that content, not worrying, about all that goes around us, resting also in the strong arms of our heavenly Father? If we knew all about him, we might wonder how he has time for us. We might think he has too many other things to be concerned about- perhaps a thousand earths with people like us, or a million tribes. If he has to covers a million light-years of space, is he also near to each of us? But the child does not wonder about all his people. He just feels the kind, warm arms of love around him. Perhaps it is good we do not know too much, or all about God- just that he is totally cares and is in control of our little world. That is what he most wants us to know, and that we should let all mankind know that about him, our Loving Father.

           

                                            What is My Worst Sin?

          (Or What is God’s Desire for Christians Living in an Affluent Culture in a World of Desperate needs?)

Many people have their favorite sin to hate. When I was young the most unforgivable sin was murder. We didn’t expect to see anyone in heaven who had killed someone. Later it was adultery that was hardly remediable. Today for some it is harming the environment. Probably child abuse is near the top, or is it the bottom of worst sins followed closely by domestic abuse, especially men against women. For evangelicals, homosexuality ranks very high. For the liberal it is capital punishment and war. For the conservative it is big government and doubt of the literal truth of the Bible. Keith Green emphasized that judgment will be based on “what they did and didn’t do” with reference to the poor and unjust victims of society. For some Belizeans about the worst is to get angry; immorality is understandable to them, but anger calls into question one’s Christianity.

With that prologue, I suppose I have no right to claim any favorite sin of my own. Perhaps we can safely say that all of the above sins are serious enough to be to warrant our attention. Perhaps on the positive side, it is good that at least someone is drawing attention to the serious faults of mankind. On the negative, it is a serious fault to regard any sin as worthy of our total focus so other sins can then be lived with comfortably. It is true that Biblical teachers such as Paul and Jesus had a whole list of sins but they did not seem to list them in order of seriousness. Anger is listed there with immorality, but so also is greed; and covetousness is in the Ten Commandments along with murder. But anger and greed and covetousness can be rationalized away easier than murder and so seem more “gray” and ambiguous to us. So we have many other gray sins that we can reason away so as to accommodate to our culture, religious, and personal values and be at peace with the sins we hate less.

I suppose my favorite sin to hate- if I am still allowed to have one after the above spiel- is the way Christians can interpret Scripture in a way so that they can do largely what they want. This goes across the board, from selfishness to greed, and materialism. Many Christian will steer clear from sexual sins but totally ignoring Jesus’ words about “loving the [global] neighbor as one’s self,” justifying living on an economic level 50 or a hundred time that of those starving; caring about abortion rightly, but ignoring the thousands of already born persons dying each day of hunger and lack of simple medicines; believing in evangelism but hoarding wealth for habitation, transportation, and security- rather than to carry the Gospel to the ends of the earth. We may support the causes of God with a token stewardship of the tithe and squandering the rest on comforts and cultural ideals. Yes, I may have my “favorite” sins, but I hope they agree with God’s love and desire for all mankind to have the Abundant Life for which he spared not his own Son. 

The Western church needs a cultural revolution where once more it responds to the words of Paul, not to let the “world” wrap it self around [it], but to be transformed by a new mind which follows Christ into a needy world. Where we are dead to sins, not only to our favorite gray ones which are easy and comfortable to avoid, but the hard ones that call for a radical transformation of our style of life. Being “dead to sin” means also to be free from the affluence preoccupation that the church and polite society accept. Again, our economic standard of living should not be determined by culture or church friends, but by Christ and the will of God for all of us as responsible stewards of our wealth. What would God really want to do in the wider world through the wealth he has given to his people? Hasn’t God given the church the economic resources to carry the full gospel to a lost and impoverished world speedily. Should we not be much more concerned to share our resources so that many more in the world could share in the Abundant Life we enjoy? (Rather than hoard it for ourselves.)